NT Day 5

The morning after doing the King's canyon rim walk, I checked out of the King's Canyon Resort, and drove back to King's Canyon. This time I did the Creek walk, down the centre of the Canyon. This walk is much easier going than the Rim walk, but still well worth while. I got a completely different perspective of the Canyon.

Here is a shot from the end of the creek walk, plus a shot of a large rock that has fallen off the canyon walls, into the creek.

After finishing the Creek walk (an hour, rather than the nearly four hours for the rim walk), I drove back to the highway and continued South. I stopped at the Kathleen springs walking track, and walked to the springs. The walking track is less spectacular than King's Canyon, but still interesting. The waterhole called Kathleen Springs is very lovely, well worth the relatively short walk.

I then continued south, stopping at King's Creek station for lunch. The hamburgers there are excellent. I filled up with petrol, flinching a bit at the price ($2.18 per litre), but for such an out of the way place it was probably very reasonable. I enquired about the helicopter flights, but was told that they needed at least two people to make it worth while to go up. As I was travelling alone, that was not possible, so I headed back to the highway.

As I was in a 2-wheel drive, I needed to stick to sealed roads, and was therefor unable to take the round trip to Alice Springs. So retraced my steps south, back to the Sturt Highway, (only a couple of hundred kms!) and then drove east to Erldunda, then North to Alice Springs. The drive took nearly 5 hours, so I was pretty worn out by the time I got to Alice Springs. I was staying at the Heavitree Gap Outback Lodge, on the outskirts of Alice Springs, which is located right next to the Heavitree Gap. This is a pass through the MacDonnal Ranges. I checked in, and had a very early night.